One of the best films i have seen

Good concept, poorly executed.

Better Late Then Never

Too much about the plot just didn't add up, the writing was bad, some of the scenes were cringey and awkward,

I liked this more than did most of the reviewers, but mainly for the visual aspects of the film. First of all, I am not used to TV movies with production values, sets, costumes, and atmospherics on this plane. If this were a theatrical film, it would probably have received a few Academy Award nominations for those sets and costumes, but they are quickly forgotten (as are good performances) in most TV fare. Anyway, this entire film has a claustrophobic and rather dirty atmosphere. One looks at just about every scene, even those taking place a bit away from the general mayhem, and wonders how people could have brought themselves to get out of bed every morning to face another day of such filth, degradation, and mayhem. Even the clean-cut heroine of the film is a barmaid fully capable of twisting a tough man's arm behind his back and throwing him out of the pub in which she works. The people who work in Mrs. Lovett's pie emporium (well, we have to call it something) look like denizens of Hell, and that is no exaggeration, for to a large extent that is what they are. And there is a sense of pure horror that pervades just about every scene and location that is quite outside the secret horror that is going on thanks to Mr. Todd and Mrs. Lovett. Next to this, THE BEGGAR'S OPERA is a day at the seaside! Outside the atmospherics, there are the performances, and with Ben Kingsley, Joanna Lumley and Campbell Scott doing the honors, we are in good hands, even though one might not really wish to remember the first two as characters of this much reprehensibility. Will I ever see Ms. Lumley again without mental recourse to her decaying teeth? But they do their job well, and Mr. Scott, as a character of scant nobility who stands out as a paragon of virtue next to many of the other characters (he's the hero!) also does well in a role that could have been tailored for his dad in his earlier career (but George C. would also have done extremely well as Sweeney Todd at any time). Anyway, not a pleasant viewing experience by a long shot, but should a story about (even unwary) cannibalism be a pleasant viewing experience even under the best of circumstances?

A series of mysterious disappearances leads an American inspector in England to a charismatic barber and his helper who bake his victims into pies for the locals and try to stop their deadly game before it's too late.A somewhat decent effort of the story, which manages some good stuff here and there to make it interesting at least. The fact that there's several interesting and fairly entertaining mysteries built up that cross pollinate each other gives this one a pretty quick pace, with the mysterious murders leading him down one path, while the fact that he needs information from a previous victim to carry out his task which intersects with the vanished helpers from their shops, and overall this whole segment is quite good. There's even a grand finale that includes the Gothic trope of burning-down-the-location as well, as several of the preparation of the victim scenes get quite bloody, but this one does have some flaws. With several romantic subplots present, it doesn't offer up a lot of time on horror-specific subplots so this one doesn't really get up there in dealing out a body count, and overall this one has more of a period/drama feel rather than an out-and-out horror film so it misses a lot of chances to deliver some gruesome shocks. These lower it enough, but it's still pretty enjoyable.Rated R: Language, Graphic Violence and Brief Nudity.

This TV-movie ranks as one of the two best versions of the classic tale of Sweeney Todd, the other one being - of course - the 1936 black-&-white movie starring Tod Slaughter.Ben Kingsley and Joanna Lumley are terrific - and their approach of the famous characters is in the true spirit of horror melodrama: a perilous "exercice de style" between horror and comedy. All the other actors are excellent, the sets are wonderful in their creepiness, a touch of gore is added to good measure, and Schlesinger's direction is faultless. This TV-movie could be shown in movie theaters, as a "legitimate" picture - in fact, it's well above most of the current movies...Incidentally, this version is an Irish-British coproduction, certainly not "an American production" as wrongly mentioned in some posts.

Okay. Okay. I know the general STORY of Sweeney Todd is a tad bizarre. However, it's not the STORY to which my summary line above applies, but to this 1998, perverted Hollywood treatment of it. The 1982 filming of the Stephen Sondheim Broadway musical of this story was classy and a classic. THIS version, on the other hand, nauseated me - not by the nature of the plan the Mrs. Lovett and Mr. Todd cooked up (pardon the pun) to dispose of the bodies of the people Mr. Todd murdered, but because of the way it was presented to the viewers. In addition, the darkly humorous element of the play seemed absent. Unfortunately (or, perhaps, fortunately), it was more than a year ago that I saw this, and I cannot recall specific examples. Suffice it to say, fans of the Broadway version will probably be very disappointed with this version.